Radiative decay from doubly to singly excited states of He via generalization of Laguerre-type orbitals: A non-orthogonal formalism

By taking full account of the non-orthogonality of the orbitals between the low-lying doubly excited states ¹P^o and the singly excited states ¹S^e and ¹²D^e of He, the corresponding radiative decay rates have been investigated theoretically via analytic generalized Laguerre-type atomic orbitals at a nearly numerical multi-configuration self-consistent field accuracy in a general non-orthogonal configuration interaction scheme. From these rates, we calculate the VUV photon emission and metastable atom spectra, and both are found to be in good qualitative agreement with recent excellent measurements. We obtain, successfully, the enhancement of the VUV photon spectrum, experimentally observed at the energy of (2s4p-4s2p)/(2p,3d) ¹P^o as compared with other nearby lying states. The mechanism proposed by Odling-Smee et al is verified, implying that taking appropriate account of the overlap existing between orbitals of the low-lying doubly excited and singly excited states (especially important for the compact orbitals) can reveal basic physical dominant mechanism and is crucial in understanding these spectra.